


Romance of the Daleks

by The_Chronographus



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005), The Dalek Chronicles (Comics)
Genre: (the Black Dalek survived Kembel somehow), Alien Culture, Asexual Relationship, Canon Asexual Character, Dalek Fluff, Feelings Realization, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff, Idiots in Love, M/M, Other, Referenced Time War (Doctor Who), Skaro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:41:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23764021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Chronographus/pseuds/The_Chronographus
Summary: The Dalek Emperor has long struggled to put words on how he feels about the Black Dalek, and, as the cleansing, sulphuric Spring Rain pours down on Skaro, he has a very ill-timed epiphany.
Relationships: Emperor of the Daleks (Doctor Who)/Black Dalek Leader (Doctor Who)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	1. Rain of the Daleks

Skaro's pure white sun rose slowly, creating shimmering rainbows as its rays danced in the falling sulphuric rain — the awesome, cleansing Skaro monsoon which would, for a time, push back the organic chaos of the planet's wild and impenetrable jungles. 

The Planet of the Daleks hadn't known spring — proper, actual spring — since the Great Neutron War, and if they'd known it, they'd have hated it; Nature, to their people, was filth; uncontrollable, infectious insanity. The people of the Universe sometimes looked at the shrieking Knights of Skaro and spoke of their madness; but to the Daleks, it was the rest of the Universe that was one chaotic, abominable howl. The Daleks valued the ordered beauty of ideas, and ideals; absolute control of a well-ordered mind over a well-ordered world; devotion, loyalty, unity, gleaming expanses. _That_ was beauty as the Daleks knew it; it was all the love they _needed_ to know.

So the Golden Emperor had decided.

He gazed down at his rain-battered dominion dominion, out of the clear azbantium window of the tallest building in all of the Dalek City. Throughout the City not a Dalek was stirring. In this time of the year, no one ventured outside the architectural masterpieces of the Empire's capital, rebuilt so many times over the millennia. It was not that Dalekanium couldn't weather the acid storm; it was simply a matter of the sacred and the sublime. Skaro was a harsh mistress, and her children must deal with a long winter of oozing, crawling filth; but this was the time when, as the Daleks' need grew too great, Skaro provided, and the beauty of the ancestral home-world was renewed. This was… _spring_.

A time of reflection. Of peace. When the Daleks could _almost_ bring themselves to believe that the Universe was on their side, just a little bit. Sometimes. When it really counted.

They were still here, weren't they? 

They had seen so much. The Dalek Prime mused: how old was he now? Most Daleks knew intimately how old they were. Their casing recorded every beating of their steadfast little heart. Every rel of their existence was archived, and distributed over the Dalek Pathweb. The memory of the heroes of old lived on. From the exploits of Dalek Thay to the short but glorious existence of the Vulcan brood, no good Dalek was ever forgotten, and no sane Dalek ever forgot itself. 

But he? He was _old_. So very, very old. Ancient. He had been the first of Dalek-kind, once upon a time; he had thought himself the last, more than once. He had died and been reborn, again and again. He had beheld abominations of flesh and Time. 

He remembered it all; but his body did not, regrown time and again in the vats of loyal Scientists. His _casing_ certainly did not; he had lost counts of how many shells he had inhabited over his tumultuous existence, from those destroyed in battle to the times he had simply traded an older model for a newer and shinier armour.

“ _I ought to know my own age._ ”

He really hadn't meant to say that out loud; the stress was getting to him. Hah. Not the _stress_ properly; this was a time of peace for the Dalek Empire; the Strategist Supreme of the Pa-Jass Vortan had no right to be _stressed_ by a sudden realisation that he really didn't remember how old he was. Or the last time he'd asked himself that question. 

But the question did nag at him. And he _had_ said it out loud.

And he wasn't alone in the room. 

Belatedly, the Emperor realised that another had been standing a few dozen geds behind him — silent, steadfast. 

The Black Dalek Leader.  The first and greatest Supreme Dalek, who had held the title long before the Supreme Council had been formed, let alone that ridiculous Parliament and its endless parade of self-important Prime Ministers. His second-in-command, from the very earliest days. 

The Dalek Prime had a vision — himself, a tangle of green fascicles and branchiae — one good eye darting anxiously around a lifeless, fuming swamp. The sudden awareness of the fact that he _was_ , followed by the crushing realisation that he was _alone_ — and then, motion; bubbles; an oily, slick tentacle rising out of the sludge, coils and uncoils. Not alone, then. He sends out a feeler, a sinewy green tendril; like two cobra snakes sizing each other up, the two limbs dance opposite each other; one of them makes a move — who? Who had it been? And the two tentacles are intertwined. _The same_. Now and forever. The first and second Daleks, Prime and Secund of Dalek-Kind. 

It probably hadn't even happened that way. Shifting timelines… The War… Any recollections of the Genesis were suspect. But that was the story _he_ remembered, and he was sure that the Black Dalek remembered it the same way.

A flash of white light. “ _Affirmative_.” 

The high, grating voice of the Black Dalek Leader had spoken slowly, deliberately.

The Emperor's mind missed a beat; his luminosity dischargers flared up, yet he said nothing. His _eight_ , bright, blue luminosity dischargers — damn his ostentatiousness; why couldn't he have the dark sobriety of his old comrade-in-arms? You'd never catch the _Supreme_ in an attire as silly as the Prime's old Flidor Gold suit. Some of the Prime Ministers had made sly jokes about the bulbous-headed dress uniform of the high-and-mighty Emperor, and he knew it.

When his voice caught up with him, his lights would now slightly out of sync with his words. The Dalek Prime _hated_ when this happened, and again the eight lights magnified the effect awkwardly — but never mind that, he reminded himself. He wasn't giving a speech to his people now; he was indoors, with only the Black Dalek to witness his gaucherie. 

“ _Ex…Explain?…_ ” he managed to ask. 

“ _You should know your age,_ ” the other Dalek replied in his usual high-pitched whine; and then, in a slower, more deliberate register: “ _So should I._ ”

He _did_ understand! The Black Dalek didn't think he was being vain, or petty, or… aberrant. 

The Dalek Prime bulbous head _flinched_ at the thought, an almost imperceptible rotation back and forth, just a radian or two. The Black Dalek would _never_ deem him impure or aberrant. It wouldn't have been in his nature to question his Emperor…

Only, that didn't sound quite right. 

The Leader would never have thought ill of him, of that the Dalek Prime was certain, but there had to be more to it than loyalty to the Emperor. There had to be, and he daren't think what it was… because the Dalek Prime realised, with something like dread, that he couldn't imagine exterminating the Black Dalek either. Whatever happened. Whatever he said or did. 

The Dalek Prime stared at his old comrade, and had a sudden urge to slide closer to him. 

It was completely irrational; even if he'd _needed_ to look closely at the Black Dalek's anthracite casing (and he did _not_ ), his eyepiece's lens was the very finest on Skaro; he could have seen a dust speck on a drone's dome from thousands of geds away. He didn't _need_ to move closer. Nearly close enough for their two very different casings' dark purple fenders to bump into each other, not unlike the Dodgem cars to which Earthmen, and the occasional Time Lord, had sometimes compared the Dalek travel machine. 

It surprised the Dalek Prime to find himself doing so anyway. 

It surprised him even more when the Black Dalek made no move to glide away.


	2. Research of the Daleks

The archives of the Dalek Race were, for the most part, digital — distributed across the great Dalek Pathweb.  However, the Golden Emperor was nothing if not attentive to decorum, unlike certain egotistical old scientists in life-support chairs. The Dalek City retained a Great Library, which stood in approximately the same location as it had in the days of their humanoid forebears, if the old maps could be trusted. Access to it was not restricted, but few Daleks ever visited it; consulting printed books and physical scrolls required a high proficiency with a manipulator claw, or else a proclivity for telekinesis, which only Skaro's _crème de la crème_ could ever hope to possess. The fear of punishment for accidentally tearing an ancient Kaled papyrus, or simply of ridicule for entering the Library only to _fail_ to pick up any book from the shelves, kept most Daleks well away. 

Hence, the entrance hall was empty but for the single patrolling Drone Dalek when the Dalek Prime made his way into the hallowed tower thanks to the City's elaborate lifts network.

“ _Hail the Emperor!_ ” the simple soldier shouted as soon as the doors opened to reveal its gleaming Emperor. “ _Report!_ ” the Dalek Prime ordered warmly, knowing it would make the Drone's day to have received a direct order from the Emperor. “ _Where may I find the histories of our people before the Neutron War?_ ”

“… _Explain?_ ” said the librarian Drone hesitantly, as if not sure it was proper to address the Emperor even to ask for a simple clarification. It added: “ _The Dals? The Daleks? Or the Kaleds?_ ”

Of course. The Pa-Jass Vortan… And even before that, his own temporal spats with Davros — that ridiculous war of egos that had almost cost them Skaro itself… The timelines of the dawn of the Daleks had become… scrambled. Tangled together, impossibly merging into a single present. Meaning there were three or four different civilisations represented in the lovingly-curated ancient-history sections of the Library of the Daleks, and no way to tell which was most “correct”.

If he had been prone to that sort of thing, the Prime would have chuckled at a realisation: the Ameronians hadn't been included on the Drone Dalek's well-memorised list. _There_ was one embarrassment of a timeline that wasn't going to trouble him again, at least.  So then. Which history would he live by today? Not the Kaleds at any rate. The Kaleds should be remembered in times of war and strife, a symbol of all the Daleks had seen, all they had lost. But what bores the fellows had been.

The Dals… Peaceful philosophers, oppressed by the wicked, warmongering Thals… He was pretty sure that whole prong in the forking history of the Daleks had started as sheer propaganda, though that didn't mean it hadn't been true at one point or another. At any rate, the Dals had always seemed to him a bit bloodless. He admired their philosophy and their architecture, in which were seeded the roots of the new heights to which the modern Daleks had propelled those arts — but neither was what he needed today.

The Daleks, then, for old time's sake. The blue, humanoid Daleks. Fallible, like any humanoids, but noble, cultured, complex — and with a lurid aesthetic flair which had informed the Dalek Prime's own throughout his life. 

“ _Zolfian's people,_ ” he said at last. “ _Show me the records of the original Daleks._ ”

“ _I obey!_ ” the Drone said cheerfully. “ _Follow!_ ”

The documents the Dalek Prime wanted — _books_ , that was what they were called, wasn't it? — were kept on the highest shelves of the highest level of the tower. He followed the Drone silently up a spiralling ramp, round and round and round again. There were windows, of course; he could see the acid rainstorm still raging on.

“ _I require data_ ,” he said when they were about halfway through.

He didn't know why he'd said that. Why? Why did he keep speaking out loud like this? Was old age getting to him? _There_ was a situation where he'd have liked to know how old he was. Could the dementia, the dreaded rot of the _truly_ old mutants be setting in? There were ways to right himself, of course, but it was best to act as early as possible. 

“ _Of course, Emperor_ ,” the Drone answered him, oblivious to his internal monologue.

Oh, fantastic. The Drone Dalek couldn't have kept silent, could it? Now he felt he had no choice but to explain himself.

“ _I require data,_ ” he elaborated, “ _about some old customs. I have a theory. I must put it to the test._ ”

The Drone Dalek said nothing, but had swivelled its eyepiece to stare at him, and continued to do so. It was obviously expecting more. 

“ _It concerns the Black Dalek Leader,_ ” he added reluctantly. “ _And —watch where you are going!_ ”

The librarian Drone barely missed slamming stalk-first into a duralinium wall. Both Daleks stayed quiet after that, and the Drone modestly retreated while his Golden Emperor performed unmatched feats of telekinesis to peruse volume after volume. He did not limit himself to annals and chronicles, but raided dictionaries manuals and guides, and he even skimmed a number of works of fiction.

It took him precisely nine thousand, five-hundred and seventy-three rels before he deemed himself _quite_ certain. But the evidence was insurmountable. His hypothesis was correct, and in this unprecedented situation, the old books, his only resource for what the Dalek thing to do would be, were without appeal. 

He looked out the window at the sulphuric downpour still pelting the wilderness, annihilating any and all plant-life, poisoning the rivers. It had been a a thrilling, a moving spectacle to him just that morning, but he gazed upon it with newfound apprehension. Because he had no choice. 

Somehow, he had to locate a flower. 


	3. Reunion of the Daleks

His many tentacles fidgeted, unseen. He rocked back and forth in the spacious environment chamber of his golden casing. The word may have lost a lot of its meaning for a creature made up almost entirely of brain matter, but the fact was that the Dalek Prime was _nervous_.

A dull chime indicated that the lift leading into his personal chambers had arrived, and as the door began to slide open, he actually felt every part of his organic body _tightening up_.

The Black Dalek Leader had arrived.

“ _Emperor,_ ” said the gleaming black monolith of a general. “ _You have summoned me._ ”

“ _Yes,_ ” he answered. 

He immediately felt very stupid. What sort of answer was that? He wondered if it wouldn't be better to call the whole thing off, even at this late stage. It was possible. Someone like the Dalek Prime always had an escape route ready. Unrolled on a holodesk was a boring map of the Ocean of Ooze from the days of Yarvelling's youth, which he had picked up on his way out of the Library. He could always lie — tell the Black Dalek that he wished to have a second opinion on the optimal location of a new underwater hive of Marine Daleks.

But no. If only because he didn't want to lie needlessly to the Black Dalek Leader, he would go through with the plan, and damn the consequences. 

“ _I wished to give you this item,_ ” he said in what he hoped was a settled, confident tone.

Held, as delicately as possible, at the claw taking up the right socket of the Emperor's weapons-platform, was a wet, slightly wilted flower, dripping irregularly on the smooth metal floor. 

The Black Dalek stood silently for a moment, then narrowed his eyestalk's lens sharply. 

“… _EXPLAIN_???” he finally blurted out, his voice louder and whinier than ever. 

“ _This is a flower,_ ” the Dalek Prime explained. “ _It was difficult to locate, because of the Spring Rain. I had to dive into the Lake of Mutations to retrieve a drowned specimen. Here it is. It is yours._ ”

He glided forward, holding out the soggy flower. The Black Dalek Leader recoiled at first, but, finding he had nowhere to retreat but back into the lift, he eventually gave in and caught the dead thing with his sleek, plunger-like manipulator arm.

“ _I… do not understand,_ ” he said in a fluctuating, confused voice. “ _Have I displeased you? Am I being… punished?_ ”

“ _Negative!_ ” the Prime hurried to correct the other Dalek. “ _The giving of the severed flower is a custom of our Forebears. It is a testimonial. A token of appreciation._ ”

“ _Oh,_ ” replied the Black Dalek. He was then silent for a moment, with the Prime guessing that he was running a full analysis on the strange object held in his manipulator arm. “ _I… do not understand this custom_.”

“ _Neither do I,_ ” he admitted. “ _But it was… necessary_.”

“… _Am I to exterminate the item?_ ” the other guessed, trying to aim his gunstick at what he held in his manipulator arm, which was not really a motion for which his casing type was designed.

“ _No,_ ” the Emperor said, thoughtful. “ _I do not think so. It is already dead_.”

“ _Should it be incinerated?_ ”

“ _I do not know for certain,_ ” he confessed. “ _I believe that our ancestors enjoyed…_ ** _smelling_** _these dead flowers_.”

“ _Daleks do not possess a sense of smell,_ ” the Black Dalek commented.

“ _Correct,_ ” the Dalek Prime replied. “ _I also know some humanoids place the severed end of the stem in a vat of water, or some other fluid. This is known as a… vase._ ”

“ _Should I… enact one of these — vases?_ ” asked the Black Dalek. “ _A container may be borrowed from the nursery. And water —_ ”

“ _You may create a vase,_ ” said the Dalek Prime. “ _You must not. Do so only if you wish it._ ”

“ _I am not sure I understand you, Emperor._ ”

“ _Do not call me Emperor now,_ ” said the Dalek Prime. “ _It has taken me too long to see it — but I do not_ ** _wish_** _to command you._ ** _You…_** _are pure, and noble, and courageous, and… Supreme. You are the perfect Dalek. You… you are superior to me._ ”

The Black Dalek Leader drew back in shock at his Emperor's words. 

“ _You… blaspheme yourself?!_ ” he said, struggling to articulate how wrong, wrong, _wrong_ this was to hear. 

“ _I speak the truth,_ ” the Prime insisted. “ _Do not speak to me my own words of madness. I see now that I am not a God. I am the First of the Daleks. And that is honour enough. But I am not the first_ ** _among_** _the Daleks._ ** _You_** _are the first among the Daleks._ ”

“ _Dalek Prime!_ ** _You_** _are supreme!_ ” the Black Dalek insisted. “ _You define us, and show us what it is to be Dalek. You always have. You see our destiny, and you_ ** _always_** _survive!_ ”

“ _Do I?_ ” he said bitterly. “ _I go on. That is correct. My mind iterates again and again. However… I change. The years, the deaths… I am not who I was. I have inhabited more casings than any other, and my flesh itself has been mended and replaced, time and again. There are times, Black Dalek, dark mornings, when I have gazed into a reflective mirror, and beheld the Ka Faraq Gatri._ ”

“ _Negative!_ ”

“ _Affirmative,_ ” he insisted, not bearing to be interrupted as millennia's worth of quietened thoughts came pouring out. “ _I know I am not the Predator. But what sets me apart, truly, from the Creator? I am different from other Daleks. I always have been. In thoughts, if not in body. I shaped the destiny of the Daleks, yes — but how could I, without standing outside of it? Hear my truth: I order the Daleks to be… to become… what I cannot be. Truly Supreme. You…_ ** _you_** _are Supreme, you are_ ** _the_** _Dalek. Always you fight. Always you survive, unchanged, undaunted. The same obsidian casing throughout your lives. I admire you, Black Dalek. You are superior to me. I…_ ”

“ _Dalek Prime,_ ” said the Black Dalek Leader, taking the lead as he edged closer, the flower flicked aside. “ _Listen. Listen to me. Just this once —_ ** _obey me_** _and_ ** _listen_** _. You must not admire_ ** _me_** _. If I am what you praise, it is because of you. Because I wish to fulfil your dreams unparalleled. You are the Dalek Prime, and I am the humble servant of your vision. Not because you are the Emperor. Not because I fear you._ ** _Because I believe you are supreme._** _You are the only ideal worth serving._ ”

Some of the biodetectors wired into the Dalek Prime's casing were going haywire now. Chemicals he didn't even know he contained reached a boiling point inside his ancient, fevered brain. And he knew, from the way his grating section shook, from the sound of his voice, and just because he _knew_ , that the Black Dalek was experiencing the exact same thing. 

It was absurd and mad and exhilarating and illogical, and everything he'd hoped for. Both of them… both of them _believed the other to be supreme over all else_. And both of them were necessarily _right_. If the Black Dalek was perfection, then he must be correct, even when he denigrated his own superiority in favour of the Dalek Prime's own. And the Black Dalek held much the same reasoning about the Dalek Prime.

They were… mutually supreme. An incredible equilibrium. Beyond the understanding of most other Daleks, to be sure; but, between them, absolutely pure. It had a name, a name the Dalek Prime had found repeated over and over again in the old writings of the humanoids, but hadn't dared speak until now. Did it really need saying? Would the Black Dalek even understand it?

“ _Black Dalek Leader…_ ” said the Dalek Prime at long, long last… “ _I love you_.”

The lens of the Black Dalek's eyestalk widened. Yes. He understood. He _understood_!…

“ _I… love… you… also_ ,” he pushed out every syllable, meaning every rel of it. 

They stared at each other for a long time, basking in the balance they had found again, the longing fulfilled. Equals now, like on that first fateful dawn in the radioactive swamp of the Skarosian wilderness. Together. As they should be.

“ _However…_ ” the Black Dalek eventually broke the silence.

“ _Yes?_ ”

“ _Please do not give me any more flowers. They are quite horrible._ ”

He aimed his gunstick at the formless organic _thing_ still besmirching the smooth metal floor of the Golden Emperor's study. 

“ _Wait,_ ” said the Dalek Prime, and readied his own weapon.

Two voices rang as one as a familiar sound destroyed the last flower on Skaro — and who cared if it was technically alreadydead?

“ _Exterminate!_ ”

Together. 

This _was_ happiness.

***

** THE END **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love "The Dalek Chronicles", and the Dalek Prime in general, for many reasons, from the deep to the frivolous. I am not quite sure where the borderline-romantic relationship between the Golden Emperor and the Black Dalek Leader would rank on that deep/silly axis, but in any event I do love it; and the idea of pushing it just a little bit further just popped into my mind and would not let go.
> 
> With my luck, my headcanon of where Dalek society is at right now will be completely shattered by "Revolution of the Daleks", but this is intended to take place concurrently with Series 12, on the reborn Skaro from Series 9, now free of that pesky houseguest Dave Ross. The Parliament of the Daleks from Series 7 is active elsewhere, while the formal head of state, the Golden Emperor — who reserves the right to dissolve, by which I mean exterminate, the Parliament if it gets in his way too much —, has returned to the original Dalek City.
> 
> (If it wasn't clear, this story assumes that the Dalek Emperor who fought the Time War and got disintegrated by the Bad Wlf in "The Parting of the Ways" was the Dalek Prime himself. That always made the most sense to me — if the Time Lords get to be governed by Rassilon the Resurrected, then it's only fair that their Enemy would be led into battle by the original article himself.)
> 
> Please comment with any criticism, compliments, passing whims, death threats, or Obverse book deals.


End file.
